Every Thursday I spend my immensely lavish 23 minute lunch period in a meeting. It’s not as if our teaching days are scheduled with millions of opportunities to return phone calls, actually go to the bathroom, etc so those 23 minutes are a precious commodity. To have it become a “working lunch” is well, a little difficult. However, it is the only time of the day when most of the ladies in my department have the same scheduled break. (Everyone but me, so I just flip things around on Thursdays.)

In the last couple years, these lunch meetings have been everything from serious discussions to birthday celebrations. Lately, my colleagues have really been understanding that I can/cannot eat certain things and have brought treats to share on our celebratory days that i can eat too. It feels great to be included with the food too.

Today’s topic is serious. And people may be stressed. So I made chocolate cookies to share with my serious chocoholic colleagues. These ladies eat more chocolate than I have ever seen consumed. Seriously. So I made a chocolate cookie that will satisfy their cravings for a crunchy, chocolaty cookie. (If you want a softer cookie, just add an egg to the mix.)

The best part? It’s gluten free.
Even better? it uses healthier grains too.

So how does a Buckwheat-Sorghum Double Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookie with Cocoa Nibs and Sea Salt sound to you? Sounds tasty, but the name is to long. Sadly, the name idea is beyond me. I’d name them after my favorite jazz singer or something else to evoke the idea of night and a good cup of coffee. But really, these are just the best stinkin’ chocolate crunchy cookie. And I didn’t want to name them that either. If you can think of a name for these, let me know. I’m just content to eat them.

Add dry ingredients to creamed butter/sugar mixture and mix until just blended. Do not overwork the dough, just mix until blended.

Add cocoa nibs and chocolate chunks and mix to evenly distribute.

At this point the mixture will not be sticking together like traditional cookie dough, however, you should be able to pinch chucks together as it is still moist enough to form small balls. Scrap the dough into a large Ziploc bag. Squish the dough into a long long. (I use the gallon size bags and make a log as long as the bag – about 11″ long (? – sorry, I don’t have one near me for reference at the moment). The log should be about 3 inches wide by 2 inches. I made my log into a rectangle, not round. Refrigerate the log for at least one hour but it made be refrigerated overnight.

Preheat the oven to 325F.

Prepare two cookie sheets with silpat or parchment paper linings.

Cut the log into cookies, about 1/2″ thick. (You will be able to make about 14-15 cookies of this size from your log). Cutting the log can be a bit difficult as the cocoa nibs are hard. Try to keep the cookies into one slab cut, but don’t worry too much if pieces crumble. You can use these crumbles on top of the cookie slabs without any problems.

Lay the cookies at least 1″ apart on the prepared cookie sheets.

Bake for 14-15 minutes.

As soon as the cookies have been removed from the oven, crush some finishing salt in your hand and sprinkle it over the top gingerly and lightly of each cookie. (The salt adds a great flavor and enhances the chocolate taste.)

Cool for 5 minutes before moving to a cooking rack. (I just slide the whole parchment paper onto the cooling racks to avoid breaking the cookies.)

Allow to cool completely before storing in an airtight container.

The cookies are chewy when warm (and definitely need some milk served along aside if these are your baking treat) and crunchy when cool. If you would like a chewier texture when cool, you can add one egg to the mix when you all the sugars and extracts.

Wow! I want to try them. These look so good, but I can’t use the sugars in them. I hope I get all of this substitution business figured out because I don’t have the first clue where to start with gluten free, sugar free, artificial sweetener free baking. What cocoa nibs & powder do you use? Any recommendations? Is there enough chocolate flavor to overpower the buckwheat? That is one flavor I’ve never really enjoyed.

Well…. I have not ever experimented with substituting for sugars beyond the natural ones. i did look up on Splenda tonight their recommendation for substituting for brown sugar. This is what they suggest:
To make 1 cup of brown sugar: Mix together: 1 cup artificial sweetener* and 1/4 cup sugar-free maple syrup

I have no idea what this does for the consistency of the dough with additional liquid. So I’m afraid I’m not much help here. Sorry I’m not much more help – but maybe someone else has more experience with this than I and they will jump in here.

As far as the flavor covering the flavor of buckwheat flour: oh yea. No worries. Only the cook will know about the flours here. All of my colleagues are gluten-eating and NONE had a clue that the cookies were GF until one of them saw me eating the cookies too. LOL What’s even more bizarre is the fact that these women all know that I have a completely gluten-free home. Trust me. The buckwheat & sorghum as secrets.
-Kate

I awoke this Monday morning with an intense chocolate craving. I remembered reading this recipe several days ago, printed it out and set to work. I had to make a few substitutions (not enough butter so I added 3 T coconut oil; not enough sorghum flour, so I added 1/4 c brown rice flour) and couldn’t wait for the “refrigeration” part, but they still turned out incredibly delicious. Only problem will be keeping them hidden away :)Thanks heaps for sharing this lovely delicacy and keeping this chocoholic satisfied.

Irene –
I’m not sure. I don’t use the Bob’s mix, so I can’t tell you if the flour/starch ratio is identical, but I bet it’s a close second. Go ahead and try i t- but do know that I’m not sure.
Good Luck!
-Kate

Made these last night for a 1/2 gluten-free 1/2 not crowd. They were lovely, VERY chocolate-y. make sure you set the timer, because they are so dark its hard to tell when they’re done. Next time I’ll cut them thinner, I think I’d like ‘em better that way. Thanks for a fab recipe.

[…] The Buckwheat Double Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies with Cocoa Nibs and Fleur de Sel from Gluten Free Gobsmacked were pretty darn awesome as well. I’m not partial to crisp cookies, but we got around that by eating them hot ‘n’ chewy as soon as they came out of the oven. I’ll have to try one again tomorrow (I know, my life is so hard!) to see how I feel about the “real” texture. They’re very subtle in flavor – not overpoweringly chocolatey or sweet or salty, but a nice mix of all three. The chocolate chunks really tie the whole passel of flavors together, so when I make these again I will not be sparing with my chocolate chunk goodness. All I want for Christmas is a gorgeous guy with a cookie gun… […]